


A Gift of Immortality

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Alie Hawke [18]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 08:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: Lyna is unendingly loyal to her friends, Fenris knows. He just didn't know how far she would go to show her loyalty until he needed something more than he needed life itself and she was the only person able to give it to him. But he'd be damned before he spent eternity without his Hawke at his side.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into chapter 29 of Vhenan. If you have not read up through chapter 29 this story will make very little sense to you. Go read Vhenan and then come back. Thanks!
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/8061676/chapters/18471244

Fenris leaned against the wall in his usual shadowed corner, hiding the darkness of his thoughts behind a satisfied smirk as he watched Alie dance. He was hidden in the shadow between two of the floor to ceiling windows, but her eyes had no trouble finding him; she knew how to look for him after spending so long at his side.

The dance being performed was one of festival and renewal, a celebration of the Elvhen New Year. The celebrations had been going on for over two weeks. Every night, all of Sa’amal’uan gathered in the throne room for dancing and music and celebration. The recently crowned king and queen took part in every single dance, sometimes carrying their son through the steps with them. Each celebration ended only when The Wolf and Halla retired to their rooms in pleased exhaustion.

Alie loved to dance; Fenris knew this well. She had been known to dance on the tables in the Hanged Man from time to time with Isabela, but what she truly loved were real dances, like the one she was performing. The Elvhen dances were performed with sinuous complexity, bodies twisting seamlessly from one movement to the next, nearly boneless. It was a form of dance the humans who lived there couldn’t master, didn’t have the build or flexibility for. And yet, even at only one quarter Elvhen, Alie did. Her slender, short body was as fluid as any elf in the room as she twirled and bent and spun. At each turn, her eyes sought his. She was almost impossibly beautiful.

He kept his pleased smile fixed, his eyes only on her, but his thoughts were dark. The removal of the Veil had caused many changes, one of which had been the restoration of immortality to many elves. To the surprise of many, not every elf had received the newfound magic and longevity. As with when the Veil went up and many but not all elves began to age, many but not all now had immortality. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to who did and did not receive the new gifts, however, and the queen was attempting to study willing participants to see if she could determine why it had happened this way.

Fenris didn’t give a damn about patterns. He didn’t care that some were still mortal and many were not. All he cared about was that Alie’s grandfather’s Elvhen blood wasn’t enough to give her the gift of immortality, the very same gift that Fenris himself had received. He would live for centuries after she had crumbled to dust.

His newfound magic was distressing, unpredictable and volatile as Fenris himself was, but he had barely spared it a thought once he’d realized what it would mean for his wife. He had magic and longevity, something so many had prayed for all their lives, and he would gladly give it away. The thought of eternity without Alie was entirely unbearable.

When she was gone, he would go into uthenera, but he didn’t know if he would find her there. The endless dream wasn’t the same as death, as what would claim her. He would go anyway because he could not face the waking world without her. And he would ask that his body not be tended so that death might, somehow, eventually claim him. He would not want to return without her.

“You are frightening the spirits,” a voice said at his elbow, and Fenris nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked to the speaker and saw the lithe form of the Halla, now also called the White Witch for the glow of her new magic, too powerful for her to contain within her skin. He scowled at her. He wished to be alone, and she surely knew that. She gave him a gentle smile. He dismissed her from his attention and returned his gaze to Alie.

“I know what you’re thinking about,” Lyna said softly, her gaze on Alie as well. “I can see the darkness around you, though not many would with the way you stand in shadow. But I see it. You are thinking of her mortality.”

Fenris sighed. The woman who would be his queen was as observant as she was unavoidable, as compassionate as she was unrelenting. She would not leave him without saying whatever she was bothering him to say. “Yes. I am,” he admitted to her, aware that his voice was as deep and dark as his thoughts. It was a tone that had sent many scurrying for cover, but Lyna didn’t even react to it. She had lived with him and Alie for a time, after all, and they knew each other well, considered each other friends.

“She has done much for us, for the People and for Thedas as a whole. As have you,” she observed mildly, tilting her head as she watched Alie laugh as she threw her body gracefully around the dance floor.

“And yet she will become dust while we linger on,” Fenris said quietly, bitterly. There was silence for a moment, and he hoped she would leave him. She didn’t.

“Maybe she doesn’t have to.” The words were so softly spoken that Fenris wasn’t sure she had said anything at all. He looked at her and frowned, but she was still watching Alie. There was something canid about the way she tilted her head to the side while thinking. Fenris had always thought her less a Halla and more a Fox, her cleverness and curiosity both rivaling and feeding her intellect even as she was more predator than prey. White Witch suited her better than Halla, but even so it was not quite right. The queen of elves defied description.

“She is mortal,” he ground out, watching the small Elvhen woman beside him as if he could find all the answers in the universe in the curious tilt of her pale head.

“Once, Ghilan’nain was a slave,” she said softly, and he scowled at her. He didn’t give a damn about the Halla Mother or her bitch of a wife. He opened his mouth to say so but found that she had frozen his voice with magic while he had been focused too far out from himself. He wanted to hit her for it, but that would just get him thrashed. He could best nearly anyone with a blade, but her magic was far beyond his even though they had received it at the same time; she simply had more power and easier control. Not to mention that the Dread Wolf would destroy him for raising a hand to her, no matter who he was or what good he had done. “She showed a kindness to an animal Andruil adored, one of her own messenger owls, a creature that was an extension of Andruil herself. Ghilan’nain didn’t know at the time that the animal belonged directly to Andruil. She just wanted to make the hunter stop tormenting it. Andruil watched through the eyes of the owl as Ghilan’nain defended the poor creature and then was overpowered. Ghilan’nain, who was known for her great beauty as well as her love of other women instead of men, was raped and blinded by the cruel hunter, then left for dead. When Andruil finally reached her, she was inches away from oblivion. Long-lived though the Elvhen are, we are not truly immortal. We can still die. Ghilan’nain was dying. Andruil was young then, only a few centuries old and impulsive, and this woman had selflessly saved her most beloved owl and been punished inconceivably for that act. Andruil used her magic to bring Ghilan’nain back, and more. Being an Evanuris was a bit more than just a title. There is a measurable power difference in the Evanuris that grants special powers and greater strength and vitality, among other things. That day, Andruil discovered that she had the ability to impart power onto another. And thus beautiful Ghilan’nain, who had been weak of body though strong of will even before she was attacked, was made strong and vibrant, a mate to match Andruil’s own strength.”

Lyna released control of Fenris’s voice at last and he used it at once to snap, “What does that _matter?_ The only woman I will ever love will die, and I don’t care about that bitch or her wife!”

“But you should,” Lyna said calmly, unfazed by his fury, still watching Alie flit about the dance floor. “Their story provides the answer you seek.” She was silent a few moments longer as the dance ended and another began. She shifted, and he was compelled by curiosity and the power of her personality to follow her gaze. “Look there,” she said, though he already was. “See my family. We are all alive and together and healthy due in no small part to you and your wife. Alie helped to fight Corypheus with us. You both sheltered me when I was vulnerable and with child. You both fought for our cause. You helped me rescue Solas when he was captured retrieving the very means used to bring down the Veil. You both have been helping me negotiate with the other nations. We owe you much. Enough, perhaps, to grant a gift if you should both desire it.” She looked him in the eye for the first time since she came up to him. Her gaze was kind and direct, and Fenris felt his scowl smoothing despite himself.

“What kind of gift?” he asked suspiciously. She smiled a little. It was the right question.

“As Andruil once ensured that Ghilan’nain would be able to live at her side for as long as they should both wish to live,” she said, “so too can Solas and I ensure that you will not have watch your wife age and die.”

The shock of her words froze everything in Fenris for long moments, and then his thoughts buzzed with increasing speed. She could live? She could be immortal like him? They would be able to try again to have a child. They could potentially have dozens of children, her body never running out of time in which to bear them. He would never have to see a gray hair upon her dark head and begin to mourn before she was even gone. She would be with him forever, if they chose, life ending in uthenera, and even then they would be together.

“Yes,” he breathed. Lyna shook her head.

“She must agree to it, as well,” she said. “Nothing will be done without Alie’s consent. And it must be done as the reward that it is. You and she have earned this, and we must make that clear. We do not have the means to give this gift to all those who did not receive it. Perhaps three in all of time can be given this gift by us. We must be very careful. But you both have earned it several times over.”

Fenris turned his gaze back to Alie, watching her dance and laugh. She would dance and laugh forever, he knew. She would take this chance to be with him forever. She had cried with him when he received the gift of magic and longevity. He had watched her try to smile through the tears. _I don’t want you to be alone when I’m gone,_ she’d said, as if he would ever want anyone but her.

The smile he wore was real now, and when he looked to Lyna to thank her she was already gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Ghilan'nain's origin story! Can you tell? This is my own interpretation of it, and I really just love it!
> 
> I couldn't let Alie die... You know that... Fenris would crush my heart for it! It was self-preservation, I swear! Don't judge me!


End file.
